It was an old-fashioned gay lynching in Iran on Sunday morning, as the state executed six inmates by hanging at the Karound prison in Ahvaz, in the country's southwest region. According to Iran Human Rights, three of the six were sentenced to death for "'unlawful' acts and acts against Sharia," based on "the articles 108 and 110 of the Iranian Islamic penal code." Articles 108 and 110 of the Iranian Islamic penal code are the ones dealing with gay sex.

Article 108 says: "Sodomy (or Lavat) is sexual intercourse between men", and article 110 says: "Punishment for sodomy is killing; the Sharia judge decides on how to carry out the killing".

The men, whose ages were not revealed, were identified only as "M. T.," "T.T.," and "M.Ch." (Two men hanged in 2005 for similar crimes were 24 and 25.) They are rare cases in that the state almost never makes direct mention of homosexuality in their sentences. It is, after all, a purely Western phenomenon, as President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad once told an audience at Columbia University. [iranhr.net, photo via Shutterstock]